


make like a tree (and stay right here)

by Nny



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluffy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Poisoning, the world's most lethal electric blanket
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23796799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: Clint opened his eyes to darkness, sprinkled through with diamond-bright stars, dappling-shadowed by tree branches spread out above him, and if this was some kinda afterlife it didn’t seem all that bad.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 70
Kudos: 339





	make like a tree (and stay right here)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flawedamythyst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/gifts).



> For Amy, because it is her birthday, which she reliably informs me is the most important day of the year. 
> 
> I love you, sugar. 
> 
> (And CB I love you too, thank you for the beta my sweet)

Clint woke to the soft incessant rustling of boot heels dragging through fallen leaves, and that was for sure a sound he knew. 

“‘m I dead?” he croaked out, just about managing something that sounded like words. A furious voice answered him. 

“Shut the _fuck_ up,” and he recognised the voice - or the anger - and he’d get it, he’d work it out, just give him - 

*

\- smelled like leaf mold and campfires, air kinda thick with it, but coughing seemed like the kinda idea he wouldn’t regret for long. There was a gust of gentle breeze from somewhere in front of him, and he tilted his head a little for the slight freshness it brought, and the warmth his cheek was pressed against rumbled softly. 

“Don’t move, asshole.” 

He’d answer, but he wasn’t sure he had the energy for it - just enough to turn his head, a lungful of lingering washing powder and drying sweat, and he’d swear he knew -

*

\- burning, he was _burning_ , his skin was blackening and cracking under the relentless heat of it and his tears evaporated off his cheeks under the onslaught and jesus christ it hurt, it hurt _so bad_ , he couldn’t - 

\- fingernails breaking as he clawed at the rough surface under him, grit grating into his fingertip skin, back bowstring taut and curved until it felt like it’d snap with it, teeth grinding down against wood - 

\- lead-heavy laboring breath and the slow drumbeat of his heart that shook his whole body to the rhythm of it but not the anchoring weight in the centre of his chest. How the fuck he lifted his hand he didn’t know, but the impossible bliss of silk-soft hair under his sticky, torn fingers, and he was sure -

“Please, Clint. _Please_.” 

*

There was a cool rush of water metallic against his tongue, and the aftertaste of water purification tablets made him wrinkle his nose. There was a choked chuckle from somewhere above him, and he’d’ve smiled in response if almost his whole face wasn’t somehow both prickling and numb. 

“I know,” someone said, someone he thought he trusted, “I know, just a little more,” and Clint opened his mouth obediently and did his best not to spit the bitterness back out. 

*

Clint opened his eyes to darkness, sprinkled through with diamond-bright stars, dappling-shadowed by tree branches spread out above him, and if this was some kinda afterlife it didn’t seem all that bad. 

Opening his eyes seemed to be about all he could do, right now. Everything - from his toenails to his hair follicles - hurt with the kind of gentle agony that strong painkillers left behind them, and even breathing felt like the toughest of workouts. He’d never really thought about what might come After, but he figured breathing wasn’t the biggest part of it, which was an argument in favour of him having survived whatever had been on the dart that hit him. 

With a herculean effort he turned his head, leaf matter and fallen twigs scraping at his neck and scalp. He wasn’t sure what he expected - he wasn’t sure he could remember much of what had ended up with him out here - but he was still kinda startled to see Bucky Barnes in an awkward slump next to him, bathed in moonlight, looking like he’d meant to stay on watch but had fallen into sleep against his will. His back was to a tree and his head was slumped forward against his knees, and his mouth was open with gently whistling breaths easing out of it. The circles under his eyes were so dark they looked bruised there, and all in all it was difficult to find the assassin under the skin of the man, which was never a problem Clint had when Bucky was awake. 

He lay there a second, his eyes tracing over the familiar features that were somehow cast entirely differently in sleep, and then all of a sudden he was wracked with a clenching, clawing pain in his stomach, and he didn’t have the strength to turn onto his side or curl up against it. He would’ve sworn that he didn’t make a noise, but Bucky was awake in a moment, clicking on a camping lantern and grabbing his far shoulder, hauling Clint towards him so when the inevitable happened - a thin stream of water and bile, burning out of Clint’s mouth and nose - Clint didn’t choke on it. 

Bucky was making low, soothing sounds, mostly wordless or meaningless, the hand that wasn’t holding Clint up brushing gently through his hair. Clint could’ve cried from it - maybe was, a little - and his voice definitely shook when he spoke. 

“Aw, vomit, no.” 

The hand on his shoulder loosened a little and then closed tighter again, and Bucky crouched over so he could see Clint’s face. 

“Clint? You with me?” 

“Hey Bucky,” Clint croaked, licking at his lips with a tongue that felt sticky and dry. “This sucks.” 

And that was a _smile_ , which was new. A fucking _beautiful_ smile, too, and maybe with a little distance Clint would be able to think that the whole thing was worth it, just for that. 

Not there yet, though. 

“Well, you ain’t wrong,” Bucky said, and sat back on his heels, scrubbing a hand over his face. 

The rest of the night was rough. Bucky kept making him take sips of awful-tasting water, and most of the time it came right back up again. He was shaking when the sun came up weakly over the trees, and he wasn’t sure if it was cold or fatigue or the aftereffects of whatever he’d been poisoned with that was rattling his teeth in his skull. The only places he was even approaching warm were the places that Bucky was touching him, Bucky’s hands in his hair and his solid thigh under Clint’s cheek. Clint had his arm wrapped around Bucky’s leg, too, the world’s most lethal electric blanket, and he was mostly trying to pretend to sleep so Bucky wouldn’t make him let go. 

The sun hadn’t made it far into the sky before Bucky was gently shaking him, the barest rocking motion that still made Clint groan. He must have somehow slept; everything he had was cold, so Bucky had been gone for a while, and he was holding the metal flask like it was full. 

“Yeah, I know,” he said, “I know and I’m sorry, but we’ve gotta move.” 

“Shit,” Clint said miserably, and tried to brace himself against it, but he still had to freeze on all fours while fireworks exploded at the edges of his vision, his limbs shaking like a newborn calf’s. He breathed carefully in and out, his head swimming, spitting to get the taste of bile out of his mouth. “Bucky,” he said, barely loud enough to hear, “Bucky I don’t think -” 

“Give it a second,” Bucky said, but Clint could hear all the worry layered into his voice. “It’ll get better, just -” 

“I can’t,” Clint said, helpless and hopeless and too fucking tired to do anything to disguise that in his voice. 

“Okay,” Bucky said, with some kind of new resolve, and Clint was just about to tell him to go - to leave him here, come back for him when he found the team, look out for his own skin - but it looked like Bucky was already way ahead of him. 

“I’ll be fine here,” he managed, for the look of the thing, as Bucky scooted around the little clearing gathering up and shoving into his pack all the things they’d used in the night. 

“The hell are you talking about?” Bucky asked, and strapped the backpack onto _Clint’s_ back, and the relief ran through him like all the cool water he hadn’t managed to keep down. 

It was a fucking nightmare, trying to get Clint upright long enough to haul him onto Bucky’s back. It was a nightmare, and it seemed endless, and it hurt more than Clint had words to describe, but eventually he was just about managing to hold on, Bucky’s arms wrapped under his thighs and his own hooked across Bucky’s chest. 

He wasn’t sure when exactly the words spilled out of his mouth - time had turned to taffy when he wasn’t paying attention - but judging by the tone of Bucky’s voice it was best that Clint couldn’t see the look on his face after Clint thanked him for staying. 

“I know,” Bucky said, “I know what I am, but you gotta know there’s no way in hell I’m leaving you here.” 

Clint just held on a little tighter, ‘cos he had no idea how to find the right words to say. 

*

“What you are is a hero,” Clint said, in one of his mostly-lucid moments. He wasn’t sure Bucky heard. 

*

He thought it was worse than Budapest, but maybe a little hindsight, a little reminiscing with Natasha, would manage to change his mind. 

So far no one was chasing them, anyway; Clint didn’t remember exactly what’d happened, but the bag he was wearing smelled of smoke, and Bucky had sounded pretty satisfied when he’d said the base was dealt with. Clint only passed out twice, too, although he threw up a few times more than that. So maybe it wasn’t the worst day he’d ever had, but the main reason for that was Bucky, and Clint didn’t know how to deal with that. 

“Can I not?” he asked, pathetic, when Bucky brandished the flask at him again. He hadn’t drunk any himself, Clint’d noticed, and he couldn’t understand what the fuck Bucky was doing wasting it on him. “You know I’m just gonna puke it up again.” 

“You need fluids,” Bucky insisted, “and until we can get somewhere to run an IV line into you this is the best I can do.” 

“You’re doing good,” Clint said. He was sprawled out at the base of a tree, still a little spinny from the last time he’d hit the floor, and he could see that Bucky was antsy and wanted to get moving again, and he was so grateful that they weren’t. “Thanks for looking after me.” 

“You did the same for me,” Bucky said, and Clint would’ve snorted if he didn’t think his stomach might attempt to make an exit through his nose. 

“Sure, if you can call it that,” he said. 

He’d visited Bucky in medical once, that was all. Heard him whimpering from clear out in the corridor, had murmured soft reassurances to try and wake him slowly, and had been helpless against the urge to brush his sweaty (and surprisingly soft) hair back out of his face. He’d nearly gotten his wrist broken, for that, and Bucky had watched him warily for at least a week. 

“It helped,” Bucky said, and didn’t meet Clint’s eyes when he carefully helped him back up to his feet and started the awful process of getting him up onto his back again. 

It hurt - _everything_ hurt - and there were no more drugs, and Clint didn’t know for sure if he passed out or just fell asleep but he buried his nose in Bucky’s neck where everything smelled good and familiar and _home_ and at least this time he managed to hang on. 

*

It took them three days to get somewhere they could pick up a signal on Bucky’s phone - a device that had the looks, solidity and approximate lifespan of a giant tortoise, and one that Clint would _never make fun of again_ \- and by that time Clint wasn’t sure he was making anything like sense. The only thing he was sure of was Bucky, solid under him, talking to Clint until his voice rasped like sandpaper out of his throat. 

When someone peeled Clint’s hands from Bucky’s shoulders, lifted his weight from Bucky’s back he saw Bucky drop to his knees and then nothing else, just a chaotic welter of motion, and he made frantic noises out of a bone-dry mouth until someone injected him with something that made it stop. 

The darkness was cool and soothing and Buckyless, and Clint couldn’t seem to escape his bad dreams. 

*

Clint could hear the gentle whistling of someone’s sleeping breaths, and he could smell clean and antiseptic sheets, and he could feel the bruising ache of IV lines and a recently removed catheter, and he could taste - ugh, Jesus, he could taste the last three days on his tongue. 

He opened his eyes to a white ceiling and recessed lighting, and the relief of it was better than anything except maybe Bucky’s smile. 

Clint knew he’d woken here before, but it had been a bit like fever dreams, and he hadn’t been sure if Bucky had really been there or if he’d just wanted it hard enough to pretend. He turned his head to the left and felt his heart beat a little faster at the sight of Bucky curled awkwardly into the chair beside his bed. He looked deeply fuckin’ uncomfortable, and so good that Clint couldn’t understand how he hadn’t seen it before, how he’d ever looked at anything else when Bucky was in the room. 

Like he could feel the weight of Clint’s stare on him, after a few seconds Bucky stirred and opened his eyes. 

“Hey Clint,” he said, soft and sleep warm and absent the twanging tension that Clint had gotten used to, “you with me?” 

“Hey Bucky,” Clint managed, then had to turn and blink up at the ceiling for a bit until he could swallow all the feelings back down. He’d already been messy enough in front of the guy, and he didn’t need to - 

His thoughts cut off as he felt warmth against the skin of his hand, a hesitant moment before callused skin folded itself around his. 

“It’s so good to have you back,” Bucky said, low and earnest, and Clint couldn’t swallow around the goddamn lump in his throat. 

“It’s so good that you stayed,” he said. Bucky didn’t respond except to squeeze his hand a little tighter; he was still holding it when Clint fell back to sleep. 

Every time he woke that day he felt a little better; everytime he woke it was to Bucky’s smile. Eventually Clint figured he could manage a little movement, and he carefully hauled himself upright against his IV stand, waiting for his shaky legs to steady under him, holding up a hand when Bucky automatically started to shove himself upright so he could help. 

“Stay right there,” he said, turning to shuffle the couple steps to the bathroom. “‘Cos I have been throwing up for the past three days and there’s no way I’m kissing you until I’ve got the taste outta my mouth.” 

There was a soft noise from behind him, but Clint didn’t feel safe enough to turn until he had the handle of the ensuite bathroom door solidly under his hand. Bucky looked a little knocked sideways, staring at Clint like he was something incomprehensible, and Clint let the corners of his mouth edge up a little into a hopeful smile. 

“You’ll stay?” he asked, and Bucky smiled back at him, one of those blindingly beautiful ones, and settled back into the seat like you’d have to pry him out of it. 

“There’s no way in hell I’m leaving,” he said.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Hawktion 2020 Art Fill for "make like a tree (and stay right here)"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28515027) by [rudearrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudearrow/pseuds/rudearrow)




End file.
